“I didn’t know what to expect,” said the “Today” show host, who adopted the baby girl in February. “The process can take two weeks, two months, two years, never! I thought if it’s meant to be, if my child is out there, then it will happen, and if it’s not, it’s the way it was meant to be.”

Kotb, 52, introduced the idea to boyfriend Joel Schiffman, 58, last year and the pair quickly put the wheels in motion, although Kotb is the only person on the paperwork.

She long dreamed of becoming a mother, but breast cancer 10 years ago left her unable to conceive, and a year after recovering, her two-year marriage to Burzis Kanga went up in flames.

“One of the things in my life I’ve always wanted was to be a mom,” she said. “Sometimes in our life, things just don’t work out for whatever reason, so you say, ‘Well, I wasn’t meant to have that.’ But it was really hard to come to terms with it.”

Once she got word a baby was available for adoption, she flew with a friend to another US city to pick up her daughter, who was born on Valentine’s Day.

“You’re standing in a room waiting, and somebody walks in holding your daughter,” Kotb remembered. “I was exploding in tears. I thought they were going to take her away and say, ‘No, we have a hysterical freak here, get that baby back!’”

She described the moment as feeling like a “puzzle piece that just snapped in. I felt it. It was as if she had been with me forever.”

While it’s unclear how long she’ll stay home bonding with her daughter, Kotb admits to waking up feeling different these days.

“I wake up sometimes and go, ‘Oh my God, I have a baby!’ But it feels totally real,” she said. “I guess if you’ve been waiting this long for something, and you wish for it, pray for it, hope for it, wonder if it will ever be, and then it happens, nothing’s more real. Nothing.”